Saturday, August 08, 2009

former leading member of the christian evangelical movement frank schaeffer says enough is enough! and he's pointing fingers and naming names.

maddow:do you think that calling the president a "nazi" ... calling the president "hitler" ... is an implicit call for politically motivated violence?

schaeffer:yes i do. in fact this rings a big bell with me because my dad who is a right wing evangelical leader wrote a book called a christian manifesto ... and in that book he compared anybody who was pro-abortion to the nazi germans; and he said that using violence or force to overthrow nazi germany would have been appropriate for christians including the assassination of hitler. he compared the supreme court's actions on abortion to that. and that has been a note that has been following the right wing movement that my father and i helped start ...

so what's being said here is really two messages: there's the message to the predominatly white, middle-aged crowds of people screaming at these meetings trying to shut them down; but there's also a coded message to what i would call the "looney tunes" — the fruit loops on the side — that's really like playing russian roulette. you put a cartridge in the chamber and you spin and once in a while it goes off, and we saw that with dr. tiller, we've seen it happen numerous times in this country with the violence against political leaders whether it's martin luther king or whoever it might be. we have a history of being a well-armed violent country. and so, really, i think that these calls are incredibly irresponsible.

but the good news is is that it shows a desperation. the far right knows they've lost. they've lost the hearts and minds of most american people ... but they also know that they have a large group of people who are not well-informed, who listen to their own sources, who buy the lies ... and these people can be energized to go out and do really dreadful things and we've seen it in front of abortion clinics — i'm afraid we're going to see it with some of our political leaders. and the glenn becks of this world literally are responsible for unleashing what i regard as an anti-democratic, anti-american movement in this country that is trying to shut down legitimate debate and replace it with straight out intimidation.

... these are very bad signs and i'm not at all optimistic about how this is all going to end in terms of violence although i do think that obama is going to win the day in terms of most americans. the problem is we're not talking about most americans. we're talking about a small angry group of white people who — to, y'know, paraphrase bart simpson, "the election broke their brains." they're angry and they're ready to do just about anything to stop the process at this point because they'd rather see us all lose than admit defeat. that's where they're at.

... you have a group of people who, like rush limbaugh, would rather see the president and the country fail, and their coded message to their own lunatic fringe is very sinful, and that is "go for broke". when you start comparing a democratically elected president who is not only our first black president but a moderate progressive to adolf hitler, you have arrived at a point where you are literally leaving a loaded gun on the table, saying "first person who wants to use this, go ahead, be our guest."

now, all these people, when something bad happens, will raise their holy hands in horror and say "of course, we didn't mean that, we were just talking about being americans. it's american to protest ..." B.S.! they know exactly what's out there. there is a whole public there who went out and stocked up on ammunition and guns thinking obama would take away their weapons. one such person shot down three policemen in pittsburgh. i'd like to know exactly what glenn beck and fox news will say the morning after someone takes a shot at our president or kills a senator or congressman ... and if it's one of the people who we find a little note in their car or their literature or their television watching habits who's tied to these people who are stirring the pot, or tied to these foundations that people like dick armey are running, trying to use insurance company money to make look these fake grass roots movement, then we'll see what happens. but at that point we'll be in a new zone, and it'll be too late.

so my warning to my old friends on the right ... without the work of my father, c. everett koop and myself, there'd be no pro-life movement, no religious right to be fomenting these things from, it's this same cast of characters. i came to a place in my life when i realized that i'd made a big mistake. now we've crossed a line into which hate and vitriol have gone to a point where it is anti-democratic and anti-american. these people do not want america to succeed. they'd rather see our system go down than have a black president, someone with different political views, someone appointing people like sotomayor, hispanic people, women and others, and we've arrived at a point where enough is enough!

so these people are hate-mongers ... spreading this rhetoric, spreading these lies ... these are bad americans and they're putting us all at risk.